Posts Tagged ‘war of wealth’

Donald Trump descended on Iowa this past weekend, dropping from the skies to deliver words of wisdom to the masses of Hawkeye Christian Republicans starving for enlightenment at the feet of The Donald. To no one’s surprise — no one outside the GOP at any rate — Trump’s inchoate jawboning once again revealed a vacuous puffball incapable of organizing the basic parts of speech into coherent, declarative, and compelling sentences. And the subsequent interviews with the media further exposed a character completely unsuited for public office. When he told ABC’s Jon Karl that he would be willing to spend half-a-billion dollars or more in a 2016 White House bid (“I’d be willing to spend that kind of money. I’d spend whatever it took,”), it wasn’t so much about his aspiration to achieve a great and responsible office as it was about his desire to buy something new and big.

Maybe it’s me, but I’ve never gotten Trump, never felt the least bit comfortable with his utterances and his maze-like thought processes. I believe most Americans take the measure of a person not by his or her bank accounts, but by his or her accountability. With Trump, there is always a fog that accompanies his pronouncements — a smokescreen of obscuring rhetoric designed to cloak him in pseudo facts and vaguely damning suggestions of impropriety. His visit to Iowa showcased his directionless approach to real-world issues.

Consider this Trumpism, a 54-worder on the Republicans’ chances of recapturing a Senate majority, as quoted by NBC’s Kasie Hunt: “Well I think you have six or seven states – I won’t mention the states ’cause I don’t want to put pressure on anybody, but I think you have six or seven states where you could really have in a couple of cases upsets, really, and you could have some good victories for the Republicans.”

When pressed for specific candidates, Trump passed, which is to say he doesn’t have a clue.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.

I was born in 1943 when America, my father included, was fighting the Nazi fascists from Germany. There were many Americans who agreed with the fascists, Joseph Kennedy and Prescott Bush included. Kennedy tried to keep America out of the war. Bush helped finance the Nazis. But democratic America, Roosevelt America defeated the fascists in that war – temporarily as it turns out.

The Nazis came home in our baggage. A former SS colonel named Werner Von Braun developed our space program. The SS colonel who ran Hitler’s Gestapo taught our nascent CIA about domestic surveillance, interrogation, martial law, and chemical/psychological techniques. In the meantime, we fought in Korea, keeping the military-industrial complex robust and vitalized (strange word applied to death-dealing), and practiced spying on ourselves – McCarthyism – a fascist witch-hunt for “commies,” undermining our confidence in our nation and its democratic institutions.

We next followed nine years of imperialistic colonial French mis-rule in Indochina to inflict seventeen years of violence on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, destabilizing and radicalizing Southeast Asia more than the Japanese had during World War 2. Then as now, the CIA and FBI further brutalized and contaminated domestic America in defense and furtherance of a generally Republican anti-peace message that was as big as the wallets they were filling from war profits.

AMERICA LOSES HER WAY:

Our practice has consistently been to create more powerful and harsher means to oppress and suppress, maim, or kill opponents. Might has triumphed over right and reason, but that makes us neither mighty nor bright. We are damned bullies, forcing our bully will on many victims. That is what America stands for today: death not life, war not peace, greed not generosity.

The Bush administration, and now beyond to Obama, with their well-practiced agents and provocateurs, served the darkest human motives, not the clean wholesome light of genuine American democracy. Justice, liberty, and equality aren’t significant words in the Republican vocabulary or principles in Republican governance. We have been subverted from within, hollowed out by a corrupt corporate power structure to serve its war machine in the interest of corporate profits. If we want any hope to rise above and beyond it, we must vote for progressives and reclaim this country for the babes who wait in mothers’ arms for fathers to come home from our latest unholy war(s).

The present situation in the United States echoes ancient Rome in important ways: A successful representative republic, proving wildly successful in war and conquest, grows rich and plunges into conspicuous consumption. In time the citizen army is converted to a professional military (a professional army owes allegiance to its paymaster, not necessarily to the nation). Beauty is heavily involved in politics and publicity (experience means less than height). King-sized constructions attest to individual power and glory. The poor get to see the lavish spread, but may not partake of it. The toll of maintaining luxury is its undoing. The general domestic economy weakens with foreign trade, although the rich stay rich and get richer. The dispossessed flock into cities and live on a diminishing dole, manipulated by politicians. The conservative legislature is indifferent to the people’s plight. The bureaucracy and the military rule all.

How did it happen? How did it get so bad? Who is hurting? The list includes everyone except the top 1% of the nation’s richest and most privileged citizens. The rich characterize any protest of this imbalance as “class warfare,” although they’ve been waging class warfare on the poor and middle class (the rest of us) since Franklin Roosevelt died. The Robber Barons have succeeded in unraveling the New Deal, beginning with the 23rd Amendment, which limited presidents to two terms: the “first stomp on FDR’s grave,” my father called it. Dwight Eisenhower’s administration put “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance (clearly in violation of the constitution), tried to give Social Security away to private insurance companies, and the Tennessee Valley Public Power Authority to private utility owners.

Thirty years ago the conservatives began to advocate for the end of public education on the grounds that it’s undemocratic to mandate school attendance. No system is pure on this side of the grave; our society considered it essential to educate all the people so that they can intelligently participate in their own democratic governance, and avoid being swindled by demagogues. The John Birch Society bulletin advised its readers to “join your local P.T.A. and take it over.”

Fascists twist democratic institutions and values to gain their selfish ends. They advocate for state control of women’s bodies; control the body, control the mind (women vote too liberally). They have besieged health, safety and environmental regulations for over 50 years, but don’t ask them to do a cost-benefit analysis on outrageous and endemic corporate welfare.

END GAMES and WISHFUL THINKING:

The end game for Bush wasn’t a fortuitous crusade against terrorism, but to bankrupt and reduce the United States government to the influence of a third world nation. Thereafter, the plutocracy will rule. Bush undid the hard-won social and legal advancements of our free and equal society. He dismantled the American Dream. He betrayed the Constitution, reinforcing the United States as a warmongering plutocracy that absolutely corrupts the democratic republic.

Republicans don’t have any kind of mandate for their radical right wing agenda. They brought us the Second Great Depression (2016 is gonna be a bitch, according to Thom Hartmann). Republicans are all alarm and greed. The Big Thieves came into our homes as we slept and threaten to never leave. We shall be their economic and social slaves, although we will be called “the public,” “the people,” “average Americans,” whatever. The dream turns into nightmare.

The pinnacle of human achievement can’t be George W. Bush (or the Koch brothers). “What a low pinnacle,” my wife says. “Bush gives new meaning to the American concept that anybody can become president.” They don’t even have to be elected. Bush came to power in interesting fashion: a virtual coup overturning the popular will, based on a very tenuous partisan split vote of 5 to 4 in a corrupted Supreme Court – buttressed by legal arguments so weak that even first year law students would blush to use them.

VOTE PROGRESSIVE:

Be well advised, in the next election, cast your ballot for progressive candidates. Turn your back to the greed and close your wallets to them. Save the dream. Defend the republic. Kick the sick twisted bastards out.

I was born in 1943 when America, my father included, was fighting the Nazi fascists from Germany. There were many Americans who agreed with the fascists, Joseph Kennedy and Prescott Bush included. Kennedy tried to keep America out of the war. Bush helped finance the Nazis. But democratic America, Roosevelt America defeated the fascists in that war – temporarily as it turns out.

The Nazis came home in our baggage. A former SS colonel named Werner Von Braun developed our space program. The SS colonel who ran Hitler’s Gestapo taught our nascent CIA about domestic surveillance, interrogation, martial law, and chemical/psychological techniques. In the meantime, we fought in Korea, keeping the military-industrial complex robust and vitalized (strange word applied to death-dealing), and practiced spying on ourselves – McCarthyism – a fascist witch-hunt for “commies,” undermining our confidence in our nation and its democratic institutions.

We next followed nine years of imperialistic colonial French mis-rule in Indochina to inflict seventeen years of violence on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, destabilizing and radicalizing Southeast Asia more than the Japanese had during World War 2. Then as now, the CIA and FBI further brutalized and contaminated domestic America in defense and furtherance of a generally Republican anti-peace message that was as big as the wallets they were filling from war profits.

AMERICA LOSES HER WAY:

Our practice has consistently been to create more powerful and harsher means to oppress and suppress, maim, or kill opponents. Might has triumphed over right and reason, but that makes us neither mighty nor bright. We are damned bullies, forcing our bully will on many victims. That is what America stands for today: death not life, war not peace, greed not generosity.

The Bush administration, and now beyond to Obama, with their well-practiced agents and provocateurs, served the darkest human motives, not the clean wholesome light of genuine American democracy. Justice, liberty, and equality aren’t significant words in the Republican vocabulary or principles in Republican governance. We have been subverted from within, hollowed out by a corrupt corporate power structure to serve its war machine in the interest of corporate profits. If we want any hope to rise above and beyond it, we must vote for progressives and reclaim this country for the babes who wait in mothers’ arms for fathers to come home from our latest unholy war(s).

The present situation in the United States echoes ancient Rome in important ways: A successful representative republic, proving wildly successful in war and conquest, grows rich and plunges into conspicuous consumption. In time the citizen army is converted to a professional military (a professional army owes allegiance to its paymaster, not necessarily to the nation). Beauty is heavily involved in politics and publicity (experience means less than height). King-sized constructions attest to individual power and glory. The poor get to see the lavish spread, but may not partake of it. The toll of maintaining luxury is its undoing. The general domestic economy weakens with foreign trade, although the rich stay rich and get richer. The dispossessed flock into cities and live on a diminishing dole, manipulated by politicians. The conservative legislature is indifferent to the people’s plight. The bureaucracy and the military rule all.

How did it happen? How did it get so bad? Who is hurting? The list includes everyone except the top 1% of the nation’s richest and most privileged citizens. The rich characterize any protest of this imbalance as “class warfare,” although they’ve been waging class warfare on the poor and middle class (the rest of us) since Franklin Roosevelt died. The Robber Barons have succeeded in unraveling the New Deal, beginning with the 23rd Amendment, which limited presidents to two terms: the “first stomp on FDR’s grave,” my father called it. Dwight Eisenhower’s administration put “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance (clearly in violation of the constitution), tried to give Social Security away to private insurance companies, and the Tennessee Valley Public Power Authority to private utility owners.

Thirty years ago the conservatives began to advocate for the end of public education on the grounds that it’s undemocratic to mandate school attendance. No system is pure on this side of the grave; our society considered it essential to educate all the people so that they can intelligently participate in their own democratic governance, and avoid being swindled by demagogues. The John Birch Society bulletin advised its readers to “join your local P.T.A. and take it over.”

Fascists twist democratic institutions and values to gain their selfish ends. They advocate for state control of women’s bodies; control the body, control the mind (women vote too liberally). They have besieged health, safety and environmental regulations for over 50 years, but don’t ask them to do a cost-benefit analysis on outrageous and endemic corporate welfare.

END GAMES and WISHFUL THINKING:

The end game for Bush wasn’t a fortuitous crusade against terrorism, but to bankrupt and reduce the United States government to the influence of a third world nation. Thereafter, the plutocracy will rule. Bush undid the hard-won social and legal advancements of our free and equal society. He dismantled the American Dream. He betrayed the Constitution, reinforcing the United States as a warmongering plutocracy that absolutely corrupts the democratic republic.

Republicans don’t have any kind of mandate for their radical right wing agenda. They brought us the Second Great Depression (2016 is gonna be a bitch, according to Thom Hartmann). Republicans are all alarm and greed. The Big Thieves came into our homes as we slept and threaten to never leave. We shall be their economic and social slaves, although we will be called “the public,” “the people,” “average Americans,” whatever. The dream turns into nightmare.

The pinnacle of human achievement can’t be George W. Bush (or the Koch brothers). “What a low pinnacle,” my wife says. “Bush gives new meaning to the American concept that anybody can become president.” They don’t even have to be elected. Bush came to power in interesting fashion: a virtual coup overturning the popular will, based on a very tenuous partisan split vote of 5 to 4 in a corrupted Supreme Court – buttressed by legal arguments so weak that even first year law students would blush to use them.

VOTE PROGRESSIVE:

Be well advised, in the next election, cast your ballot for progressive candidates. Turn your back to the greed and close your wallets to them. Save the dream. Defend the republic. Kick the sick twisted bastards out.

[Don’t forget to CLICK the IMAGES for extra information and “forbidden delights”]

JOE KENNEDY and PRESCOTT BUSH:

I was born in 1943 when America, my father included, was fighting the Nazi fascists from Germany. There were many Americans who agreed with the fascists, Joseph Kennedy and Prescott Bush included. Kennedy tried to keep America out of the war. Bush helped finance the Nazis. But democratic America, Roosevelt America defeated the fascists in that war – temporarily as it turns out.

The Nazis came home in our baggage. A former SS colonel named Werner Von Braun developed our space program. The SS colonel who ran Hitler’s Gestapo taught our nascent CIA about domestic surveillance, interrogation, martial law, and chemical/psychological techniques. In the meantime, we fought in Korea, keeping the military-industrial complex robust and vitalized (strange word applied to death-dealing), and practiced spying on ourselves – McCarthyism – a fascist witch-hunt for “commies,” undermining our confidence in our nation and its democratic institutions.

We next followed nine years of imperialistic colonial French mis-rule in Indochina to inflict seventeen years of violence on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, destabilizing and radicalizing Southeast Asia more than the Japanese had during World War 2. Then as now, the CIA and FBI further brutalized and contaminated domestic America in defense and furtherance of a generally Republican anti-peace message that was as big as the wallets they were filling from war profits.

AMERICA LOSES HER WAY:

Our practice has consistently been to create more powerful and harsher means to oppress and suppress, maim, or kill opponents. Might has triumphed over right and reason, but that makes us neither mighty nor bright. We are damned bullies, forcing our bully will on many victims. That is what America stands for today: death not life, war not peace, greed not generosity.

The Bush administration, and now beyond to Obama, with their well-practiced agents and provocateurs, served the darkest human motives, not the clean wholesome light of genuine American democracy. Justice, liberty, and equality aren’t significant words in the Republican vocabulary or principles in Republican governance. We have been subverted from within, hollowed out by a corrupt corporate power structure to serve its war machine in the interest of corporate profits. If we want any hope to rise above and beyond it, we must vote for progressives and reclaim this country for the babes who wait in mothers’ arms for fathers to come home from our latest unholy war (s).

The present situation in the United States echoes ancient Rome in important ways: A successful representative republic, proving wildly successful in war and conquest, grows rich and plunges into conspicuous consumption. In time the citizen army is converted to a professional military (a professional army owes allegiance to its paymaster, not necessarily to the nation). Beauty is heavily involved in politics and publicity (experience means less than height). King-sized constructions attest to individual power and glory. The poor get to see the lavish spread, but may not partake of it. The toll of maintaining luxury is its undoing. The general domestic economy weakens with foreign trade, although the rich stay rich and get richer. The dispossessed flock into cities and live on a diminishing dole, manipulated by politicians. The conservative legislature is indifferent to the people’s plight. The bureaucracy and the military rule all.

How did it happen? How did it get so bad? Who is hurting? The list includes everyone except the top 1% of the nation’s richest and most privileged citizens. The rich characterize any protest of this imbalance as “class warfare,” although they’ve been waging class warfare on the poor and middle class (the rest of us) since Franklin Roosevelt died. The Robber Barons have succeeded in unraveling the New Deal, beginning with the 23rd Amendment, which limited presidents to two terms: the “first stomp on FDR’s grave,” my father called it. Dwight Eisenhower’s administration put “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance (clearly in violation of the constitution), tried to give Social Security away to private insurance companies, and the Tennessee Valley Public Power Authority to private utility owners.

Thirty years ago the conservatives began to advocate for the end of public education on the grounds that it’s undemocratic to mandate school attendance. No system is pure on this side of the grave; our society considered it essential to educate all the people so that they can intelligently participate in their own democratic governance, and avoid being swindled by demagogues. The John Birch Society bulletin advised its readers to “join your local P.T.A. and take it over.” Fascists twist democratic institutions and values to gain their selfish ends. They advocate for state control of women’s bodies; control the body, control the mind (women vote too liberally). They have besieged health, safety and environmental regulations for over 50 years, but don’t ask them to do a cost-benefit analysis on outrageous and endemic corporate welfare.

END GAMES and WISHFUL THINKING:

The end game for Bush wasn’t a fortuitous crusade against terrorism, but to bankrupt and reduce the United States government to the influence of a third world nation. Thereafter, the plutocracy will rule. Bush undid the hard-won social and legal advancements of our free and equal society. He dismantled the American Dream. He betrayed the Constitution, reinforcing the United States as a warmongering plutocracy that absolutely corrupts the democratic republic.

Republicans don’t have any kind of mandate for their radical right wing agenda. They brought us the Second Great Depression. Republicans are all alarm and greed. The Big Thieves came into our homes as we slept and threaten to never leave. We shall be their economic and social slaves, although we will be called “the public,” “the people,” “average Americans,” whatever. The dream turns into nightmare.

The pinnacle of human achievement can’t be George W. Bush. “What a low pinnacle,” my wife says. “He gives new meaning to the American concept that anybody can become president.” They don’t even have to be elected. He came to power in interesting fashion: a virtual coup overturning the popular will, based on a very tenuous partisan split vote of 5 to 4 in the Supreme Court – buttressed by legal arguments so weak that even first year law students would blush to use them.

VOTE PROGRESSIVE:

Be well advised, the next election is in November. Cast your ballot for progressive candidates. Turn your back to the greed and close your wallets to them. Save the dream. Defend the republic. Kick the sick twisted bastards out.

A lobby group that includes BP and Shell in its membership has launched a legal challenge against low-carbon legislation in California that in effect rules out the use of oil from Canadian tar sands. The action by the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) comes amid growing political, investor and consumer pressure on US oil companies not to participate in the carbon-intensive tar sands of Alberta.

A NPRA statement said the legislation was unlawful for a number of reasons, including the imposition of “undue and unconstitutional burdens on interstate commerce”.

It claimed the legislation would also have “little or no impact” on greenhouse gas emissions nationwide and would harm US energy security “by discouraging the use of Canadian crude oil and ethanol produced in the American midwest”.

The refiners are joined by the American Trucking Associations and the Centre for North American Energy Security in their attempt to overturn legislation from California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants to cut C02 emissions from transport by 10% by 2020. READ MORE:

Nuclear Does Not Make Economic Sense Say Studies by Julio Godoy. February 15, 2010 by Inter Press Service

BERLIN – The enormous technical and financial risks involved in the construction and operation of new nuclear power plants make them prohibitive for private investors, rebutting the thesis of a renaissance in nuclear energy, say several independent European studies.

The risks include high construction costs, likely long delays in building, extended periods of depreciation of equipment inherent to the construction and operation of new power plants and the lack of guarantees for prices of electricity.

Adding to these is the global meltdown and the consequent cautious behavior of investors as also fiscal and revenue difficulties of governments in the industrialized countries, say the studies.

In the most recent analysis on the feasibility of new nuclear power plants, the Citibank group concludes that some of “the risks faced by developers … are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially.”

The Citibank paper, titled ‘New Nuclear – The Economics Say No‘, lists five major risks developers and operators of new nuclear power plants must confront. These risks are planning, construction, power price, operational, and decommissioning. According to the study, most governments in industrialized countries today have only “sought to limit the planning risk” for investors.

But, while it is “important for encouraging developers to bring forward projects, [planning] is the least important risk financially,” the survey goes on. According to the Citibank group, the most important risks are construction, power price, and operational. The paper dubs these risks “the corporate killers.”

Environmental activists would add safety issues as another major risk – both the handling of highly radioactive nuclear waste and the likelihood of accidents at nuclear power stations.

The Citibank bases its conclusions on estimated costs of construction and operation and in the necessity of setting too high electricity prices for consumers, and which have seldom been reached in the past.

According to the paper, the costs of constructing a new nuclear power plant range between 2,500 to 3,500 euros (3,420 US dollars) per kilowatt hour. READ MORE:

Republican Strategy: You Are Either with Coal, or Against Us, February 15, 2010 by Politico.com

GOP Mines Coal-Country Anxieties by Jonathan Martin

Republicans believe there are three words so powerful that they might reshape the political order in an economically beleaguered corner of the country: War on coal.

With Democrats holding total control of the federal government and a cap-and-trade bill still looming, the GOP is fanning widespread coal country fears that the national Democratic Party is hostile to the coal mining industry, if not outright committed to its demise.

Those efforts are putting a group of coal state Democrats at risk as Republicans leverage the tremendous economic anxieties surrounding the future of an industry that is a vital part of their states’ economies.

In West Virginia and Kentucky, longtime Democratic House incumbents with solid records on the issue are taking heavy flak. Across the border in Virginia, a veteran Democrat could face his most serious challenge yet in part because of his support of cap and trade. Two junior lawmakers from Ohio are facing threats for the same reason.

The issue may loom largest in West Virginia, where coal mining is an integral part of the culture and makes up a full quarter of the state’s revenues.

A well-known former state supreme court judge switched his party registration to run against 17-term incumbent Rep. Nick Rahall in the state’s coal-heavy south and wasted little time in raising the issue.

“West Virginians deserve a congressman who will fight to end this war on coal instead of standing by idly as thousands of local jobs are threatened,” said Elliott “Spike” Maynard in launching his campaign last month.

In an interview with POLITICO, Maynard said: “Our part of the world and way of life is threatened by liberal Democrats in Washington.”

He pointed out that some environmentalists want to stop all surface mining, the above-ground technique that happens to account for about 40 percent of the state’s coal jobs.

His message, he said, was simple: “If you vote for Spike Maynard, you’re voting for your job and to mine coal. If you’re against me, you’re voting against your job and against mining coal.” READ MORE:

We’ve just learned that the Senate and the White House cut a last-minute deal with obstructionist Republicans to approve some of President Obama’s nominees. But guess who was left out of the deal? Yup, that’s right: working people.

Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, highly respected labor lawyers whom President Obama nominated for seats on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), weren’t included in the deal. Meanwhile, the NLRB, tasked with protecting American workers’ rights, has been handicapped with vacancies for the past two years.

Enough is enough. Call the White House switchboard today and demand that President Obama fight Republican obstructionism and use his executive power to appoint Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the NLRB during the Presidents Day recess.

Call the White House Switchboard NOW: 202-456-1111 OR 202-456-1414.

Becker already has received majority backing in the Senate and both won committee support, but the Republican minority has continually blocked their appointments. America’s working people are getting short shrift and it’s past time to do something about it. Workers need an NLRB that can enforce the National Labor Relations Act and protect workers’ rights-not an NLRB handicapped by vacancies.